Paint This Desert speaks with Arléne Rivera, co-writer of "Más Americanos," a musical scheduled for performances on September 8 and 9 at Winchester Cultural Center. Then PtD briefly touches base with Patrick Gaffey, Cultural Program Supervisor for Clark County Nevada, about the center's theater programming.

the Besides being HQ to Clark County's public art program, Winchester Cultural Center is busy on any given day that it is open. The art gallery is always booked. The small conference rooms double as art studios, poetry hives, rehearsal halls or receptions. And the theater hosts a range of community meetings and performance programming. Now Winchester Cultural Center has tapped into theatrical performances that speak directly to a Hispanic audience, reflecting a demographic change in Southern Nevada.

And as it is with Latino Art, at times content is story driven and features political conflict.

A 2015 conference in Austin, Texas, explored how Latino art challenges mainstream thinking was a tradition. "There's a long history of Latino political art and there's been a resurgence beginning in the 1960s that continues today," said Gilberto Cardenas, a sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame, to NBC Latino. "Many artists were also activists and worked collectively with their communities to improve conditions of Latinos in the U.S."

That's also applies to Latino theater.

Winchester Cultural Center will soon see a production that can be filed under that tradition. "Más Americanos" is a musical based on "The Space Traders" by Derrick Bell and continues some demanding political commentary. The musical is about aliens making contact with the U.S. to offer resources in exchange for 11 million people. The release goes on to say "At the center of the controversy is a young DREAMer, struggling to understand her place in the exchange and trying to keep her family together."

What is intriguing is that "Más Americanos" is a musical. There will be some Spanish lyrics, but the libretto was written with an English speaking audience in mind.

Paint This Desert: Is the music original? If so, who do we credit for the music and lyrics?

Arléne Rivera: Outside of a traditional Mexican song (Cruz de Olvido) that plays a pivotal role at the end of the play, the score is completely original and written by myself and Eric Franklin. We are lifetime musicians, but this is our first musical. We've enjoyed the challenge of the musical format, specifically crafting compelling lyrics that also move the narrative forward.

PtD: What is music's influence?

AR: The music is difficult to categorize. There are some conventional pop songs, others recall the 90s heyday of trip-hop, and a few have a distinct hip-hop flavor. While we did not limit ourselves to a specific genre, we took great pains to maintain continuity as we crossed genres.

PtD: Music can add to a show's running time. How long will "Más Americanos" be?

AR: The run time is about an hour.

PtD: The idea of adapting a 1992 short story that comments on Blacks in America to make a statement of DREAMers in 2016 is bold. How did that come to be?

AR: We are both academics with strong interests in race, class, and culture. Professor Derrick Bell is one of the founders of critical race theory, and his short story, "The Space Traders," has long captured our imaginations.

"The Space Traders" has skirted the fringes of popular culture's imagination, without ever really making the mark that it deserves. The closest it came to being in the mainstream public conscience was probably the manufactured controversy over President Obama's 1991 speech at Harvard Law School. In that speech, Obama praised and embraced Prof. Bell's protests of Harvard's failure to promote women of color. About 20 years later, conservative media highlighted the speech and used "The Space Traders" as an example of so-called "race baiting" in an attempt to discredit both Prof. Bell and President Obama.

PtD: Please, explain ' manufactured controversy."

AR: Conservative media took offense at the suggestion that America would agree to send away all American Black people. But what conservative media ignored is that we cannot be sure what America would do. If an advanced civilization offered us medicines and clean energy in exchange for all Black people, can we be certain that we wouldn't accept the offer?

​While it may seem absurd to most Americans that such a trade would be considered, we cannot ignore the fact that a significant minority of Americans profess a willingness to vote for Donald Trump, an openly racist and proudly xenophobic presidential candidate. And any votes for Trump are in exchange for little more than empty promises, as opposed to the miracle cures and clean energy promised in "The Space Traders." If we are being honest, we cannot be sure what America would do if a similar trade were offered today.

PtD: And the change keeps the original critical message intact?

AR: To be clear, our decision to focus on undocumented people is not an attempt to diminish the central message of Prof. Bell's short story. There is no doubt that Black America's suffering has not diminished since Prof. Bell published the story, and the struggle for true equality persists. One need only turn on the news to hear how our society appears incapable of protecting Black lives. However, we believe that the message in Prof. Bell's short story is, sadly, widely applicable.

​America's history of subjugating Black people is without parallel, but America's willingness to marginalize minority populations is not limited to the Black experience. Today's targets include not only Black people, but also Latinxs (undocumented and documented), Muslims, Sikhs, American Indians, people of Middle Eastern descent, and innumerable "others" that are deemed unwelcome by the dominant culture.

We hope not to usurp Prof. Bell's discussion, but to add to it. We hope that the musical sparks conversations about not only the plight of the undocumented, but also the continued struggle of Black Americans.

Patrick Gaffey: Winchester is a cultural center, and the Hispanic cultures have been particularly responsive. Mexican folkloric dance concerts have drawn full houses for the last twenty years. The success of Spanish-language theatre here was a surprise, because English-language theatre had not done well, yet plays in Spanish drew full houses. Now English language opera and theatre is beginning to do well, too.​PtD: What is the backstory on how producing new Latino/a theater?

PG: Stacy Mendoza came to us and proposed presenting “The Vagina Monologues” in Spanish. Another group had already presented the play in English. Stacy mentioned that she had produced it in Spanish the previous seven years in Las Vegas, which made it seem she had already used up a very specialized audience. But we tried it anyway, and she sold out the house. The next year she did two shows and sold them both out.

Then she and Alma Lopez presented a comedy by Mexican playwright Humberto Robles, who is very well known in Europe. Robles saw a video of the Winchester production, contacted Stacy, and told her how impressed he was. He then told her that if she would produce all of his plays, he would give her a greatly reduced price for the rights, so Mendoza and Lopez have produced a series of his works, from comedies to the very dark “Mujeres de Arena,” about the murders of women in Cuidad Juarez.

PtD: Does that reveal a need to look at cultural events for changing demographics in Southern Nevada?

PG: Winchester tries to keep up with the population as it changes. For the first time, on September 25, we will present Ethiopian programming, namely the music and dance group Fendika from Addis Ababa. We hope to build a strong relationship with the Ethiopian community as we have with so many other ethnic communities in Las Vegas.